Ben had made good time from Le Val and it wasn’t yet midnight. He cleaned up his grimy hands with the wipes and the rest of the water, then climbed into the front passenger seat, racked its backrest all the way down, and tried to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. It wasn’t a success. With so many anxious thoughts buzzing through his mind the best he could hope for was to close his eyes and try to let his body relax. A Buddhist monk wouldn’t have been able to find inner peace at a time like this. In the end, he gave up and got out of the car, pacing and smoking to try to burn off his nervous energy. That didn’t work either.

Then it was time to head the last few kilometres to catch his night crossing. Back on the motorway, he soon passed under the overhead TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE sign and followed the filter lane for private vehicles. At the other end of a flyover was the automated check-in terminal where a machine fed him his boarding pass to hang on his rear-view mirror. After the French passport control was the security check area, where cars were stopped at random for inspection. Ben had been through that routine before. Some examinations were more thorough than others. The vehicle might be put over a grid with a camera below that scanned the underbody for anything fishy. Sniffer dogs were sometimes let loose to test their uncanny skills in detecting drugs or explosives. A suspect vehicle could be stripped down to the last nut and bolt while its owner sweated in a Border Force holding pen. And now and then, to much triumphant fanfare that belied the fact that any success was almost entirely down to luck, they actually nailed a smuggler.

What Ben was carrying carefully concealed inside his car would have landed him in jail on charges of anything from arms trafficking to suspected terrorism. But his precautions turned out to have been unnecessary as the Alpina sailed through the security control with nobody the wiser about the Browning Hi-Power and thirty-nine rounds of ammunition wrapped in an airtight, heat-resistant package within a secret compartment deep inside the Alpina’s engine bay, coated in heavy grease.